Happy Friday everyone! Welcome back for Week 8!
This week, I tried my hand at a Frosted Walnut Layer Cake. This is simply described as an “old-fashioned cake iced with a simple ‘American frosting.’” Cake, walnuts, frosting – what more could you ask for?!
Before we get into the nitty gritty, this is the first (and only) cake in the Fruit and Nut Cakes chapter! Most of the cakes in this chapter are, you guessed it, fruit cakes. Seeing as I’m not a huge fan of those, I decided to skip the majority of this chapter and move on to a new chapter next week.
So, let’s get started with this week’s bake! The recipe did call for three 8-inch round baking tins, but I only have two, so I just had a two-layered cake instead of three – no biggy! This recipe is our favorite kind of recipe: a dump cake! Just measure everything into a big bowl, mix, and boom! Cake batter ready to go in a matter of minutes!
As usual, my nemesis came back to spite me yet again… butter chunks. I wasn’t sure when exactly I was going to be able to bake this week, so I admittedly didn’t set the butter out soon enough. It was out for a good 5 hours, but it definitely wasn’t long enough. After telling the butter chunks that I would appreciate them not making an appearance every week, I put the batter into the two tins, eyeballing their evenness. The batter really didn’t taste like anything other than sugar and walnuts, which of course isn’t a big disappointment, ha-ha!
The recipe calls for 25-30 minutes in the oven, but I checked it after 15 minutes. The batter was still basically a liquid, so I ended up leaving them in for a total of 29 minutes. The cakes did sink, even though I had decreased the amount of baking powder from 2 tsp to ¼ tsp. I’m going to revisit the interwebs and do more research into other methods of escaping future sinking tragedies.
Now the interesting thing about this recipe was the way in which you make the frosting. The recipe tells you to add “all ingredients into a bowl over a pan of hot water and whisk for 10-12 minutes until thick.” I had seen bakers do this on the Great British Baking Show, so I tried by best to recreate what is called a “double boiler.”
The recipe calls for 10-12 minutes of whisking, and being the goober that I am, I decided whisking powered by good ‘ol arm strength was the best method. As I kept whisking and the frosting didn’t start thickening, I realized my method probably wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing. After 15 minutes, my dead arm and I decided we’d just use the liquid frosting on the cake and see how it went. For context, here’s what the frosting is supposed to look like:
My frosting, however, was a nice soupy mess, ha-ha! Even more unfortunately, the sugar had not dissolved all the way, so mine had an oh-so-pleasant grainy texture. I was a little rushed for time as I was finishing up the frosting and cake, so I wasn’t able to have a second go at making the frosting. Next time, I’ll be using an electric hand mixer, and I think I’m going to increase the heat on the stove to have hotter water than what I was working with this time around.
I’d like to point out that the recipe does offer an alternative method of making the frosting that involves a sugar thermometer. I would assume most of us don’t have a sugar thermometer lying around, but if you do (or just want to buy one), there’s another option for you. This method requires you to boil the sugar and water before adding the stiffly-whisked egg whites and mixing together.
You might be wondering why I’m missing a picture of a cut piece of the cake. This is due to the fact that once I cut into the cake, the dam that had been keeping my frosting in place broke, and frosting was going everywhere all at once at astronomical speeds! You’d think that as the frosting cooled, it would start to thicken and stop moving – this was not the case in this situation, ha-ha! Needless to say, I was busy trying to keep the frosting river at bay, and didn’t think to take a picture of the cut piece.
Overall, I’d give this cake a 3/5. The cake flavor was very pleasant! It was nice and moist, and the walnuts added a very pleasant crunch and flavor. I’m definitely going to give the frosting another try, but it was clearly a fail this time.
Although this recipe is the only one I’ll be doing in this chapter, we have a ton of fun chapters still to come! Check back in next week for a spicy one (hint, hint)!
That’s it for week eight, the frosted walnut layer cake! Thank you for following along with me, and, again, if you have any questions, feel free to use the “Get in Touch” feature on my “About Me” page and subscribe to get updates on posts!
See you next week!
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